Abstract

The Korean War Veterans Memorial (KWVM) in Battery Park, New York was created by Welsh-born American artist Mac Adams, and dedicated in 1991, commissioned by the Korean War Veterans Memorial Commission (1987-1991). Since the mid-1980s, triggered by the realization of Vietnam War Veterans Memorials, there arose a collective awareness that the Korean War veterans had been unrecognized, which led to several parallel commission processes in different cities for erecting KWVMs. While Adams’ memorial was the first KWVM in New York, and a unique memorial that came out of a “successful” commission process, there has been little written about it, ironically mirroring the forgotten state of the Korean War and its veterans in the United States. As an eclectic hybrid of various paradigms of memorials, Adams’ KWVM blended traditional forms and materials of memorial monument with a new approach by cutting out its center to incorporate the surrounding environment. The cutout figure of the “universal soldier” in the black granite stele symbolizes “void,” evoking the sense of loss, and by extension, reflects the “invisibility” of the Korean War veterans in the United States. This article is the first scholarly study on the KWVM in Battery Park and analyzes the memorial in its interaction with the site, while connecting it with the associated problematic position of the Korean War as a “forgotten war,” followed by a detailed discussion of its “successful” commission process, and its unique position in both public art discourse and the artistic oeuvre of Adams.